Chapter Four

 

At the sight of Page’s obvious point of infection I started shaking violently. More tears came and mingled with the snot that dripped down my face. Wailing sounds came out of my mouth but I couldn’t be held responsible for them.

My reaction was probably the worst thing for Page’s own mental stamina but I had officially lost it. I pulled her up and crushed her against my chest. I whispered meaningless promises against her hair, swearing that this would be okay, that she would be all right.

Neither of those things was true.

None of us would survive this.

Even Linley put a delicate hand on my shoulder as if to comfort me. She squeezed gently and her breath shuttered as she exhaled.

This sucked.

And I could tie it all back to Kane. He brought me here. He kidnapped Page and me. He thought this place would be secure enough to keep out the Zombies. But it had failed us.

And so had he.

I could have thought through all those things and each one would have tracked a different road to furious. But I couldn’t process all that yet.

Page was enough for me.

And so instead of anger and vengeance, the only thing I could feel was sadness.

Extreme, bone-deep, life-altering sadness.

Page looked up at me and with the wisdom and insight of someone a hundred times her age, she picked up the gun that had fallen uselessly to the ground and handed it to me. “Reagan,” she said in a trembling voice. “Do it. Before I hurt someone. Do it.”

I shook my head frantically. “No, Page. I won’t. We’ll go through this together. Whatever happens, we’ll do this together.”

It was her turn to shake her head. Her blonde curls whipped around her face and got caught in the streaks of tears that ran down her face. “I won’t hurt you,” she cried. “I won’t take you away from Hendrix. He would be so mad at me! I won’t do it! Kill me now! Don’t make me hurt someone!”

I was full on sobbing. “No!”

“Reagan!” Kane shouted but I ignored him.

The gun felt extra heavy in my hands, cold and deadly as I fingered the trigger.

“Please, Reagan,” Page begged with a broken voice. “Make it fast. Make it so fast I don’t feel it. Please, I don’t want to hurt anyone. Please don’t make me hurt someone. I can’t take it if I accidentally bite you.”

“Reagan!” Kane shouted while he loomed over me. He expected my attention but I wouldn’t give it to him. This was between Page and me. This was our thing.

Could I shoot her? Could I put her out of her misery like she asked? What would that take? Soulless bravery? Or compassion? Cowardice? Callousness? The pure evil inside of me that would surely infect everything that was left of my soul? Or would this be an act of mercy?

God, why did I have to make this decision?

I wanted any other hardship than this! I would have faced any other thing! Why this? Why Page?

I broke down into tears again but my finger slid over the trigger. Page saw the small motion and scrambled back so that I had plenty of room. She stood strong. She stood courageously. She stood like no girl in her position should.

I knew that even I couldn’t stand with that kind of moxie.

Trembling and feeling dangerously light-headed with adrenaline and fear, I pulled myself up to my knees. Linley let out a wailing, hysteric sob but didn’t move to stop me.

I could feel the temperature rising in the room as the roar of the fire blazed above. Kane would hopefully take out the entire horde with this inferno, but the house would be demolished as well. And who knew how far this fire would rage. It had the potential to take out the entire forest. Would more innocent lives be lost because of the Allens and their sick obsession with control and possession?

This was enough.

Page was more than enough.

I stared at her, admiring her more than I had respected any other person in my life. The gun shook and rattled in my hands but I sucked in a calming breath.

She was already dead, I told myself. She was already dead.

I had been so sure that I would let her bite me. I had promised myself that she wouldn’t go through this alone. But just like all the times before, I yielded to her request. Easily. This girl had always had me wrapped around her finger and this moment was no different. If she wanted the peace of knowing she hadn’t hurt anyone else… of knowing she hadn’t hurt me, I would give that to her.

How could I not?

“Reagan, put the goddamn gun down!” Kane yelled at me.

“No,” I told him hoarsely… firmly. I raised the weapon, certain it only had a few shots left. These would be the most careful shots I ever took. They would be perfectly placed, perfectly aimed. Like she asked, I would make this fast. I would do this for her.

There was too much darkness in this act to comprehend what would happen to me if I pulled the trigger.

I could only see blackness. I was sure I would cease to exist after this horrific act. I wouldn’t die. I wouldn’t get the mercy of entering into some kind of afterlife. I would be sucked into hell through a vacuum reserved only for the truly appalling people.

And I would deserve it.

I would deserve every second of my future suffering.

I gathered more courage knowing I would be punished for this. Knowing Page’s killer would get exactly what she deserved gave me more strength. I inhaled deeply and let the breath out through my nose.

Kane realized for the first time that I was serious about this. He jumped in front of my gun and put his hands on my shoulders in a soothing gesture. The unyielding barrel jabbed him in the stomach but he didn’t attempt to move it or take the weapon from my hands.

Frantically, he said, “Page will be all right for a second. Put the gun down and come talk to me.”

I glared at him and then the floodgate on whatever emotions I had been holding back burst and I slapped his hands away and stabbed him in the stomach with my gun. “Page will not be all right, Kane! Page will never be all right again! Can’t you see that! You did see it! You saw it! You saw the bite! Let me help her! Let me end this for her so that she doesn’t suffer anymore!” My voice was raw and stripped with agony. I couldn’t see straight through the cloying tears and my heart felt one more emotion away from complete combustion.

Page hiccupped a giant sob and I was right there with her. I was covered in blood from multiple sources, my face was wet with tears and snot and I knew that I looked as crazy as I felt. But Kane looked down at me with this utter adoration plastered across his handsome face and I wanted to do nothing but spit at him.

How could he look at me like that?

How could he ask me to leave her for even one second when we all knew what this would mean?

“You are not going to shoot that little girl,” Kane ordered me.

I shoved the gun to the side to prove my point, to prove that I took care of her, not him, to prove that I wasn’t a bad guy for doing this. I was a good guy.

He was a bad guy and he always would be.

He jumped back. He left me to go run in front of Page and shield her with his body. “Stop this, goddamnit! Stop it! I won’t let you hurt her! I will not let you shoot her, Reagan. Put the gun down and just think about this for one second!”

I shook with fury now as I screamed at him. “I have thought about this! Don’t you know that I’ve thought about nothing else but this! What else can I do, Kane? There is nothing else to do! Let me get this over with, please. Please, god, let me just do this before I lose my courage and she has to… before she has to…” But it was too late. I had lost whatever will power I’d worked myself up to. I dropped the gun at my feet and covered my face with my hands. I fell to my knees and let out the ugliest cries of my life.

Page couldn’t take it anymore, either. She ran across the space between us and collapsed at my side. We clung together again and cried and cried and cried. She buried her face in the crook of my arm and let out all the fear she had kept so tightly locked up.

Kane walked over to us and knelt in front of me. He tipped my chin up so that I was forced to look at him. I blinked away the tears so that his face came into focus and hated the comfort I found in his honest gaze.

“Reagan, I promise you that Page is going to be alright. Will you please talk to me for just a minute? We’ll just step over there. You can come right back to her. And she will be here, okay? She will be safe and human and waiting for you.” His southern drawl was soft and coaxing and his hands reached up to cup my biceps.

“How can you promise me that?” My voice was complete desperation, my spirit grasping for any glimmer of hope.

“Because she hasn’t tried to bite you yet.”

I sniffled and looked down at Page who had fallen asleep in my arms sometime in the last five minutes.

She’d fallen asleep.

Not died. Not turned. Not become a horrendous monster that tried to eat my brains.

She’d closed her eyes and her trembling breaths had steadied into soft snores of unconsciousness.

If she hadn’t been bitten an hour ago, I would have expected this behavior from her. Whenever she’d been in the middle of one of our battles with the undead before, she would always make it through like a champ and crash from the sudden drop in adrenaline. She was tiny, underfed, malnourished and only eight. Sleep was her go to bodily reaction for the kind of trauma we lived with daily.

I looked up at Kane in complete confusion. “Why hasn’t she tried to bite me yet?”

Finally understanding that I wasn’t going to give up this girl, Kane joined me on the floor with his back to the cot. His long arm laid out against my back but he didn’t exactly wrap his arm around me; it was more like it was there if I wanted it, if I asked for it.

I glanced back at Linley who had pulled her knees to her chest and started to shake as badly as I had been moments ago.

“You alright, Mama?” Kane asked gently.

She shook her head and buried her face in her knees. Kane reached out and wrapped his large hand around her ankle. He held her there and she seemed to settle some. She looked up at the ceiling and flinched at the extremely loud roar the fire made over our heads. Sweat had started to bead along my hairline while the heat of the blaze overhead warred with the damp, coolness of the bunker.

“We’re alright now, Mama,” Kane promised her. “They can’t get to us down here and we have plenty of food and water to last until the fire’s gone out. We’re safe now. Someone is coming out to check on us the day after tomorrow. We can last two days down here. Easily. Alright?”

Linley nodded vacantly and tried to sniffle back her tears. “Alright,” she whispered.

“Why don’t you lie down for a while? You’ll feel better if you get some rest,” Kane suggested.

She nodded again and tipped to the side, right where she was. Kane leaned over, squishing me in the process, and helped his mother cover up with a rough, scratchy blanket. I glanced back at her one last time and noticed that even while her body continued to quiver, she had closed her eyes and her breathing had evened out.

“Is she going into shock?” I asked Kane just loud enough for him to hear me. The noise from above should muffle my voice and keep it from carrying to Linley.

“I’m hoping she can fight it,” Kane replied. “If she gets some rest, maybe the worst of it is over. She’s just not used to this. She hasn’t seen the Feeders like this. My father has kept her safe this whole while. The only time she’s really been exposed to Feeders has been when they’ve been caged.”

I grunted. I had no sympathy for Linley Allen. And Kane just proved my point about the Colony. They hid their people away, especially their women. In a world as dangerous as ours a lack of exposure and ignorance was a fast track to death.

I looked down at Page and realized it didn’t actually matter.

Whether Matthias kept you locked away or you had an army of determined brother’s to protect you, the wrong place at the wrong time meant death no matter what.

“Kane, why hasn’t she tried to eat us yet?” I asked after several minutes of silence. It had to be somewhere in the middle of the night by now but the thought of falling asleep never entered my mind.

And after the living nightmare I’d just endured, I might not ever sleep again.

That is, if I survived the rest of the night.

“There is a possibility, a small possibility, although the more time that passes, the more likely it is, that she… that she’s immune from the worst of the infection.”

I didn’t respond.

There was nothing to say.

What he just said was impossible.

Sensing my hesitancy to believe him, he went on, “Reagan, if she would have reacted like every other person infected, she would be wild by now. We would have had to restrain her or kill her. It wouldn’t have mattered that she was a child. It wouldn’t have mattered that she is small. She would have been as lethal as any of them. She is immune.”

“Immune,” I repeated. I let the word settle on my tongue and roll around in my head. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know the science of it,” Kane started. He turned to face me and this time he did wrap his arm around my shoulders. “But I’ve seen it before. If you think about it, it’s just an infection. It’s simply a communicable disease. In almost every disease known to mankind before the Zombie plague, there have been those that were somehow exempt. Smallpox, Scarlett fever, chicken pox, malaria… you name something humanity has faced and I will show you how humanity has prevailed. We are fighters. We were born to survive this world, to make it ours. Zombieism is an expectation, but we have an exception to every rule.”

“You really are your father’s child,” I whispered, half in awe of this possibility and half terrified of it.

He shook his head and his expression grew grave. “No,” he argued. “No, this is all me. My father hates this. He hates that he can’t control every single outcome. He hates that this could lead to a cure or a vaccine and that his power could be stripped away from him. On this, my father and I are different.”

I pressed my lips together wondering if I could trust Kane. I believed him one thousand percent that his father hated that there were those potentially immune to the infection. And I completely understood Kane’s explanation. Matthias used the Zombie infestation to control the people that worshiped him. If people didn’t have to fear Feeders any more then his power would be significantly depleted.

He would be nothing but a figurehead. His people might stick with him for a while but only until they didn’t need him.

If the Zombie threat could truly be eradicated and the world made safe to live in once again, Matthias Allen would lose everything.

“You’ve really seen this?” I asked.

“My father… my father and his men have a lab. I’ve seen a lot of things.” The bleakness to his tone tightened my chest. He shook his head and met my gaze again. “But I’ve seen people be immune before. I’ve seen them repress the transition.”

“Did your father kill them?” I clasped Page to me again. Matthias would never come near her. I would do whatever it took to keep her away from that entirely different kind of monster.

“He didn’t have to.” He ran his hand over Page’s matted blonde curls again. “All of the ones I saw still died of the infection; they just didn’t turn into Zombies. There’s a fever that follows the bite. They were still infected; they just had something inside them that kept them from becoming Feeders. Page is about to get really sick, Reagan. Really, really sick.”

I kept her close to my body and felt myself tear up all over again.

“And if she bites someone? Will she infect them?”

Kane shook his head. “Not from what I’ve seen. My father has tested that theory though.” His tone was darkly amused.

“Of course, he would have that tested. What greater weapon than someone who could still think and function in normal society but still infect people.”

“Exactly,” Kane agreed. “But it hasn’t been possible so far.”

“So there’s… there’s a lot of people immune?”

“I’ve seen two over the last two years. If there were more, my father didn’t tell me about them. But I don’t think he would hide that from me. It’s a small percentage of the population. But the immunity exists.”

“Is it… would he have researched enough to know if the immunity was genetic?” Hope flared in my chest so bright I thought it would blind me. The Parkers. All of them could be immune.

He smiled sadly at me. “It’s not. There was a brother and sister pair that… the girl had tried to… anyway, my father wanted to punish the girl but she was immune. He brought her brother in to test that same theory but he turned. She died later from the fever.”

“What a life you live,” I mumbled. I didn’t think he heard me though, not with the fire crackling overhead.

“Could she wake up and still transition?” I shouldn’t be so trusting of Kane but I couldn’t help it. I had nothing left to lose at this point and nobody else to help me sort this out. If Kane had seen this before, I wanted every piece of information possible.

“Not into a Feeder.”

A thousand pounds lifted from my shoulders and I sagged against him. “She could live through this?”

“Reagan…”

“Kane,” I cut him quickly. “If there is room for hope let me hope. I know that everyone you’ve seen has died, but I can only imagine what kind of conditions your dad placed them in. And I doubt he tried very hard to save them.” Kane stayed thoughtfully silent, so I continued. “Page has me. Do you understand what I would do for this little girl? Do you understand what I would sacrifice?”

He smiled softly and looked down at the top of Page’s head. “I do understand what you would sacrifice. I almost watched it happen.”

“I didn’t want her to… I didn’t want her to die a monster. She isn’t one. She’s the most beautiful, innocent creature I’ve ever known. And she might possibly be the only lovely thing left in this world.” Tears fell again but this time they were from the overflow of all this emotion. I had been through everything tonight. From the very pits of despair to this new feeling of complete and redeeming relief.

“She is a beautiful thing,” Kane agreed. “But she’s not the only one.”

I looked up at him and he leaned into me. His arm was tight around me and his body heat seeped into my skin and spread over me like wildfire. He pressed a kiss against my forehead and sat back a little.

“What you did for her was very brave, Reagan. I am constantly amazed by you.”

“Stop,” I told him. “Nothing I did today was amazing. I failed Page. She should never have been bitten to begin with. We shouldn’t have to face a fever or infection or any of this. I mean, could you imagine if she hadn’t been immune? What if… what if she would have… Or what if I would have…” my words caught in my throat and I couldn’t get out anything else. I held Page closer to me, and the tears started again.

I didn’t think I would ever stop crying after this day. I was too much of a mess now. Tonight had ruined me.

I hoped Hendrix was ready for this upgraded level of brokenness…

Or maybe he wouldn’t want me at all after this.

Oh, gosh! New waves of sickness washed over me.

Page had been bitten under my watch. How would I ever explain that to Hendrix and Vaughan? And would they ever trust me again?

No. The answer to that question was a resounding no.

Kane pulled me into the curve of his body as I broke down again. He kissed the top of my head and made soothing sounds. I let out more tears than seemed possible for my body to produce.

“Reagan,” he soothed after a while. “You have to stop. You have to be able to take care of Page or my mother is going to have to.”

He sounded amused while he scolded me, but he was right. Damn.

I sniffled into his shirt and attempted to pull myself together.

“Besides, don’t you want to ask me about this place? I know you’re dying of curiosity.”

Now I could tell he was grinning into my hair. “Fine,” I huffed. “Tell me how you just happen to have a bunker down here.”

“Gage’s uncle.”

I looked around at the space again and realized it did look vaguely familiar. “Really? He built this for you before Zombies ever dropped by?”

“Yep. Gage’s Uncle Dan was a bit of a nut job to begin with. I mean, he took this stuff really seriously. I bet that warehouse was packed with survival stuff when Gage got there.”

“Was he super religious or something?” I hadn’t pulled away from Kane yet and sometime in the last few minutes I had decided I wasn’t going to. I would be faithful to Hendrix and I would even force myself to remember that Kane was not only my enemy but also my kidnapper and the whole reason Page and I were in this chaos.

But I also needed comfort. I had been through hell today. I needed a hand to help me get through the aftermath. I needed support before I crumbled into unfixable pieces that turned into jagged edges that would cut anyone who got close. Kane said I would save him, but tonight he saved me.

In more than one way.

He shook his head. “No, not religious. He was all about government conspiracy theories. He always had these theories about Russia invading and the government collapsing. He was a really entertaining guy to drink with.” He looked down and winked at me.

“You knew him?”

It was hard for me to take Kane and Gage’s past life seriously. It felt so different from who they were now; I usually wrote it off as some alternate reality or Zombie fan fiction. It was even weirder because of the connection they used to have with each other. They didn’t just have lives; they had life together.

“Yeah, sure,” Kane shrugged. “Small town. Everybody knew everybody.”

“I know what that’s like,” I admitted. “So he built this for your dad?”

“Yes. My dad wasn’t quite as bad as Dan, but… close. He had a lot of his own theories and fears that made him pursue something like this construction. I didn’t know about Dan’s bunker until, well, until we got trapped in it.”

“And the ceiling is fireproof?” I had my doubts the longer the thing blazed overhead. It had gotten seriously hot down here. I was uncomfortable with the heat but not enough to feel as though my life were threatened. Actually… this was the safest I had felt in a while.

“Should be.” His arm squeezed mine. “My dad always has a contingency plan lined up. We’re all right for now, Reagan. And someone is coming out to check on us soon. You’re safe.”

I nodded against his arm, too afraid of my easy concession to verbalize anything. “Thank you, Kane,” I whispered to him after long minutes of silence.

His entire body stilled and I felt his breathing stop altogether. “For what, Reagan?”

“For stopping me. For recognizing that Page wasn’t going to turn. Thank you for keeping me from… hurting her.”

He looked down at me and I felt compelled to meet his dark gaze. Only a lone lantern lit our space and his face flickered in the dim, golden light. “I’m not always evil,” he said with emotion through a voice gravelly.

I recognized his words as a question. He was asking me. He was hoping for an answer that he couldn’t believe.

“No,” I told him. I reached up and laid my hand against his jawline. “You’re not always evil.”

His head jerked forward a half inch and I felt him war with himself as he debated whether to kiss me or not. I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t have.

It wasn’t as though I wanted to kiss Kane just then, but I couldn’t hurt him. I had been through too much. My feelings were scraped raw and my soul split open. If Kane had kissed me right then, I really would have kissed him back.

And I didn’t think I would have regretted it.

It almost felt like it needed to happen, that I needed to kiss Kane and get to the bottom of whatever current of electricity ran between the two of us.

But he didn’t kiss me. He let me have the fullness of his gaze while he watched my face and looked for something I couldn’t understand. Then he pulled back and shifted his body.

“You should try to sleep some while Page is out. She’s going to get worse before she gets better. She’s going to need you when she wakes up.”

I sat up, realizing he was dismissing me. I didn’t blame him but that didn’t stop the ripple of confusion travel down my body.

It was then that I noticed that not all of the heat I felt came from the ceiling. Page was burning up in my arms. Her little body was on fire with the infection.

“I should clean her before I fall asleep,” I told him.

He agreed and while she slept the two of us tackled her back bite. We cleaned it, disinfected it and disinfected it again. Kane didn’t want to waste the few supplies we had, but I wanted to make sure that bite was as sparkly clean as possible.

Then I washed as much of her as I could without taking any clothes off. I did the same to myself and dealt with the scratches and gashes I’d accumulated. I set Page down for just a few minutes so I could help Kane with his various wounds and washing.

The other cot hid several long plastic tubs of clothes- one for each member in the Allen family. I was fortunate enough to raid Tyler’s stored clothes and find something clean to put on. I finished cleaning myself in the bathroom and changed into some simple sweatpants and a long-sleeve tee. Kane went in next and I took the opportunity to change Page into some of Miller’s clothes and finish cleaning her, too.

Then I carried her over to the other cot and laid her down. As much as I wanted to keep holding her, I knew she shouldn’t be so wrapped up in my body heat right now. She needed space to cool her fever. My touch would just make things worse.

I stripped the bed of the scratchy blanket and let her lay on top of the cold sheets. She slept through the entire ordeal and I knew that was a bad sign but there wasn’t anything I could do at the moment.

I was just so thankful that she wasn’t a Zombie. I had a hard time looking at the fever as a bad thing because it gave me unprecedented hope. She could be all right. If she beat this thing she could be just fine.

And this was a girl that had stood up to death and tilted her chin defiantly in the face of a loaded gun. A fever would be nothing to her. She could conquer anything.

Kane emerged from the bathroom and nodded his approval at Page on the bed. Without another word, he walked over to Page’s cot and slunk back to the floor near her feet. I stood awkwardly near the head of her bed while he stretched his arm out along the edge of the small bed.

He looked up at me from under those thick lashes and tilted his head in a gesture of beckoning. Without hesitating for even a second, I crawled in next to him and leaned against his solid body.

I would feel different tomorrow.

Tomorrow I might stab him in the eye for being the responsible party that allowed all this to happen.

But right now I had nothing left to be angry with. I had no fury, no flame, and no spark of life. Right now my body had all but shut down in order to heal itself from the trauma and shock of today.

So when I finally convinced myself that Page would survive the next few hours and closed my eyes, I snuggled into Kane and decided not to worry about this or what message it sent to him.

I would worry about him later.

I would worry about everything later.

I slid my hand along the cool sheets until I found Page’s tiny hand and I wrapped my fingers around hers.

I said the first non-panicked prayer I’d uttered since my parents were killed. It wasn’t a desperate plea in the middle of a battle or some panicked oath I made while fleeing for my life. This prayer was spoken with complete clarity of mind and sincerity even if the same despair and helplessness existed in the tone.

I prayed for Page and for her health. I prayed that she would live. That she would survive this with that same fearless spirit she survived everything else. I prayed for the rest of her family and Haley. And I prayed for Tyler, Miller and Gage.

And then I prayed for the man I cuddled into for the night.

I had thought so many times that he was lost for good, that he was nothing but the embodiment of evil, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse.

But he was not all gone.

He was not all evil.

There were still good pieces to him. There was still goodness in him.

Maybe he wasn’t completely lost.

And even though I could never be the one to save him like he wanted, I could be the one that told him he was worth saving… that his soul was worth saving.

Maybe he wouldn’t care. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference because we would die down here.

But then again, maybe he would listen.

Maybe he would believe me.

By the time sleep took me, I didn’t know whether to be more afraid than ever or just thankful that I made it through another day. I didn’t know if Page would make it or not, but I was going to do whatever it took to save her.

To keep saving her.

I meant what I said earlier; this world was ugly and filthy, desolate and hopeless. But she was bright and lovely; she was worthy and real. And I would do whatever I had to in order to make sure she stayed with me, with her family.

I wouldn’t let the Parkers lose another loved one.

I wouldn’t give Hendrix another reason to leave me. My feelings for Kane were softening but that was it. Kane didn’t hold my heart and soul in the palms of his hands like Hendrix did. Kane wasn’t my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. Kane didn’t get to own every piece of me and intertwine our futures into unbreakable bonds.

Hendrix did. Hendrix had all of me and he always would.

And I would never willingly cause him pain. Most of all that included his sister. As soon as she woke up we would start fighting this and we would not stop until she was healthy again.

After that, I was reopening the discussion about going south because I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Matthias anywhere near Page after this day.

None of us was safe anymore. Maybe that had always been true, but Matthias had never been more of a threat than today.

Today I realized that there really could be a cure for the infection.